George: Go slow on delinquent taxpayers

By LITO RULONA
Correspondent

COUNCILOR George Goking said city hall needs to review its list of delinquent taxpayers and consider factors the contributed to the ballooning collectibles since 2008, including lapses on the part of the local government.

Goking, chairman of the city council’s ways and means committee, said some unpaid taxes were on really old buildings.

“We found out naa gihapoy lapses ang collection nato,” he said.

He said the collectors need resources for mobilization without which taxes would remain unpaid.

“Even in sending notices, naa gihapo’y problema,” Goking said.

The same problems, he said, confront the City Assessor’s Office that face difficulties in sending notices to property owners, and in updating its data.

“Because of this problem, the city council is proposing the allocate funds for the mobilization of these offices. The city council will help them so they could expedite the collection process,” Goking said.

Goking said city hall should also go slow in going public with the list of delinquent taxpayers. He said he preferred not to refer to them as “delinquent taxpayers” but just taxpayers with taxes that remain uncollected.

“Hinay-hinayon nato ni kay kung i-publish, maulawan sila and then dili na unya mobayad. We will give them the benefit of the doubt nga nalimtan nila ang ilang katungdanan,” he said.

Goking said this after the city council’s committees on ways and means, and finance met over the uncollected real property taxes that have balooned to over P900 million since 2008.

Goking said the committees found out from Evelyn Labis of the City Treasurer’s Office that the real property tax delinquency from Barangay 1 to Barangay 80 as of Dec. 31, 2015 amounted to P470 million. Add the penalties and the figures shoot up to over P900 million plus.

Labis, who represented City Treasurer Glenn Bañez, said city hall was partly to be blamed because it lacks the manpower to send notices to tax delinquents.

Labis also told the committees that city hall gave a tax amnesty in 2012 after the Typhoon Sendong devastation, and many availed of the program.

“After that year, we have not given another tax amnesty, but we give yearly incentives to taxpayers who are prompt in their payments,” she said.

Earlier, city treasurer Glenn Bañez said there was a need for city hall to apply pressure on delinquent taxpayers.

From 2008 to 2016, unpaid taxes and stall rentals in the city hall-owned markets rose to P1,635,201,814.68. Unpaid real property taxes account for much of the collectibles at P914,703,114.19 while the remainder are from market stallholders at Cogon, Carmen and Bulua who owe city hall P56,724,695.05.